


Slip Into Your Skin

by suluism



Series: Be A Place That I Call Home [2]
Category: EXO (Band), 소녀시대 | Girls' Generation | SNSD
Genre: Alternate Universe - Celebrity, Alternate Universe - Fashion & Models, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Alternate Universe - Tattoo Parlor, F/F, M/M, Social Media, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-25
Updated: 2016-11-25
Packaged: 2018-09-02 02:24:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8648155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suluism/pseuds/suluism
Summary: She wants the world to look at Jessica and see Taeyeon there too. Soulmate + Celebrity + Tattoo Artist AU.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Don't worry about reading the other fic, as this can stand alone.

Taeyeon is eighteen when she decides she wants to be a tattoo artist.

She likes the permanence, the way that the ink means leaving a mark on skin, on the world, that can’t be erased. A tattoo is an identifier: I’m here, I exist.

She also likes the way that people get confused when they see her years later, littered with tattoos and running her own small studio. Quiet Taeyeon, the one who always let little Baekhyunnie drag her around the school without a sound, writes her words out on skin.

Maybe the part she likes the most is the way her tattoos mask her mark. The prying eyes who look at her on the street or at the grocery store, the ones who silently hope she’s The One because she’s pretty, because she’s blonde, because she’s silent, don’t get to know a thing about her.

She likes it that way.

She used to hate going anywhere without Baekhyun, who was hyperactive in his endless jabbering and never stopped talking long enough to let anyone approach them with a request on their lips. The force of his voice, laughing and teasing, was always enough to keep away the people who would approach her when alone, asking to see her mark, asking to take her home.

The tattoos are a shield, a patina of ink and art that keep people away. She isn’t just pretty anymore—she’s scary, too.

But then she meets someone who is scary and pretty all at once and doesn’t need ink to be so, who can turn on someone in a moment with a well-placed glare.

Taeyeon is twenty-four when she meets her soulmate for the first time.

It’s the kind of story Baekhyun has always wished for himself. She feels something warm buzz in her head, and even though she’s tired after a day of dealing with needy clients, she steps into a café on the way home.

It isn’t one she’s been in before. It’s a bit upscale—they have real espresso machines, and the walls are covered in hand-written chalkboards proclaiming the daily specials. Taeyeon usually makes watery coffee for herself at home, reusing the same filter until it tears. She’s not exactly broke, but she’s still paying off her studio and Baekhyun barely scrapes by on bandcamp downloads and a pitiful vocal trainer’s paycheck.

Taeyeon is suddenly jarred out of her thoughts by a shoulder.

“Sorry!” A voice says, and Taeyeon’s head snaps up.

And she knows.

She doesn’t have to say anything, because the other woman knows it too.

Taeyeon has never had a way with words. At least not out loud. And the woman is staring, but she doesn’t smile.

“I’m Taeyeon,” she introduces. Gives a quirk of the lips. Holds out her hand.

The other woman shakes it, but it feels like a stranger’s handshake.

Although, Taeyeon supposes that is what this is.

(But a little voice inside her says no, no, it’s supposed to be more magical than this.)

“Jessica,” her soulmate says. She reaches down to grasp Taeyeon’s hand, and her heart jumps up her throat, as if it wasn’t already hard enough to speak. “Let’s go somewhere else.”

They walk along the river. It’s already dark out, but Jessica is wearing sunglasses that take up half her face and a mask that takes up the other half. The only thing Taeyeon can make out is her hair, which is long and soft and reddish-brown, the kind of colour you can only get with salon treatments.

Jessica finds them a bench to sit on eventually. Then she takes off her sunglasses and mask and smiles. Her face lights up and the line of her shoulders relax, like she can finally be herself. “I’m so relieved,” she says. “It feels like I’ve been waiting for this forever.”

“Are you…a celebrity?” It’s hard to ignore the signs. Normal people don’t walk around with such care, as if they’re walking on a sheet of ice that’s seconds away from dropping them into dead water.

Jessica’s mouth tenses into a thin line, like the slash of ink across an empty page. “Do you…recognize me?”

Taeyeon shakes her head, and she rubs her mark, nestled deep in the crook of her elbow beneath layers of clothing. “You just seem…cosmopolitan.”

But that’s not what she meant at all. She wants to say that Jessica looks perpetually windswept, like she can never be kept in one place for long. That her face has the smile lines of someone who smiles often, but not for choice. That she wears her sunglasses like armor, like one more curtain between her and the world.

“I’m a model,” she says.

Taeyeon can’t say she recognizes her. She’s the kind of person who buys old t-shirts on sale to wear under Baekhyun’s hoodies. If Jessica is a model, she’s certainly not modelling the kinds of clothes Taeyeon wears.

“I’m a tattoo artist,” Taeyeon offers up, and she gestures at her body with an awkward smile-grimace.

“I see that,” Jessica smiles again, and she tucks her hair behind her ear. With that same momentum, she reaches to take Taeyeon’s hand. Her thumb swipes across Taeyeon’s inner wrist. “What’s this one for?”

They talk long into the night. Jessica offers up her number, and they promise to meet the next day. When Taeyeon returns home, just as dawn breaks, Baekhyun is asleep at the table with drool on his arm and a long-cold bowl of soup on her side of the table.

 

* * *

 

The next day, Jessica explains that she’s leaving for Paris. She has a clothing line to design, and fashion shows to attend and run. It was planned long before she met her, she assures, and she’ll make it work with video calls and texts and weekend visits. Anything for you, she says.

She leaves Taeyeon with a scarf, the kind of luxurious one that Taeyeon would never wear, and then she’s gone in a whirlwind of perfume and promises.

 

* * *

 

> **Jessica**
> 
> _ Tues, April 6, 10:08 AM _
> 
> **Taeyeon  
>  ** _baekhyun forgot to buy milk_
> 
> **Taeyeon  
>  ** _so now i’m stuck drinking water with my cookies_
> 
> **Taeyeon _  
> _** _[image attachment]_
> 
> **Jessica  
>  ** _aww, don’t pout_
> 
> **Jessica  
>  ** _it’s too cute…makes me want to fly back_

 

* * *

 

For the first month, they text every day. Taeyeon is more comfortable that way, and she finds herself sending small observations and the occasional complaint about Baekhyun’s forgetfulness. Jessica sends her selfies and pictures of Paris. They read like the distance of acquaintances, but sometimes something else slips in, a longing, and Taeyeon doesn’t know what to say.

So she doesn’t say anything.

It’s the video calls that she can’t avoid. Jessica is reticent in the interviews that Taeyeon watches, laid in bed at night when she wants to reach through the screen to understand what Jessica is like, beneath the sparkles and gloss. But in video calls, she’s the one to fill the silence with endless questions and confessions.

“I’ve always dreamt of meeting my soulmate,” Jessica says one afternoon. She had started the FaceTime call as she walked into her apartment, holding the phone up as she kicked her heels off and melted out of her armor. Taeyeon had found herself wishing, almost mindlessly, that Jessica might kick those shoes into her entryway someday.

“I think most people do,” Taeyeon says, idly doodling in her sketchbook and trying to look like she isn’t obsessed with the way Jessica’s robe has slid off her shoulder.

Jessica sighs dreamily. “I always imagined my soulmate as a knight who takes me out of my mundane life.” Her eyes dart to Taeyeon through her webcam, and if Taeyeon hadn’t been looking at the way the sunlight hit her hair, she wouldn’t have noticed. “It was just a childish fantasy, anyways.”

She smiles and starts talking about the Parisian architecture, which she says is overrated, but that night Taeyeon dreams of knights slaying dragons and reaching the room at the top of the tower, only to find the princess has left long before.

 

* * *

 

> **taeyawn**
> 
> _[image of a sword wrapped in flowers]_
> 
> ❤ **honeybaek** , **lovelyjess** and **45 others**
> 
> **taeyawn** for my princess in the tower.
> 
> View all 15 comments
> 
> 2 HOURS AGO

 

* * *

 

Jessica gets her first weekend off two months after meeting Taeyeon. She flies back Friday afternoon and Taeyeon picks her up from the airport. A few paparazzi and fans crowd around the arrival gate, and Taeyeon’s glad she conveniently forgot the glittery WELCOME BACK sign Baekhyun made for her in the recycling bin.

Then Jessica steps through the gate, and flash bulbs are going off and fans are shouting her name. She smiles and speaks to a few of them, taking their letters, but Taeyeon can see that her mouth is tense.

Taeyeon walks up to her and takes her luggage. The paparazzi ask who she is, but she’s taken a leaf out of Jessica’s book and is wearing sunglasses and a mask of her own.

By the time they get to a taxi, Jessica’s hand is squeezing hers.

 

* * *

 

> **Sica**
> 
> _ Wed, May 15, 10:08 AM _
> 
> **Taeng  
>  ** _my client came in with a puppy!_
> 
> **Taeng _  
> _** _[image attachment]_
> 
> **Sica  
>  ** _so well behaved! ^^_
> 
> **Sica  
>  ** _i met a dog today too. in the form of a handsy male model -_-_

* * *

 

Every time Jessica sees her in person, she starts by asking about another tattoo. Taeyeon starts to worry, sometimes, on the nights when Jessica is too tired to call, that when she’s explained every tattoo they’ll have run out of things to talk about.

“This is the one I made Baekhyun give me,” Taeyeon says, pointing to a tiny x on her thumb, right next to the nail. “He has a mole there, and when we met I thought it was his mark.”

“I want to meet him someday,” Jessica says, grinning. Taeyeon smiles back, but she doesn’t say that she wants to keep Jessica to herself for just a little longer.

She starts to imagine tattooing Jessica instead, destroying that empty canvas of skin for anyone else’s eyes. She wants flowers for Jessica, crawling vines and delicate leaves and endless petals across every inch of her so that no clothes she ever modelled could cover up that masterpiece. She wants the world to look at Jessica and see Taeyeon there too.

 

* * *

 

A few months in, Baekhyun finds his soulmate in a prince. They don’t hash out the details explicitly, but she knows from the way Baekhyun talks about Junmyeon and the way Junmyeon looks at Baekhyun that they’ll be moving in together soon, and then Taeyeon will be left alone in their apartment.

“When am I gonna meet Jessica?” Baekhyun asks once, head rested on Taeyeon’s shoulder as he peers at her phone. She’s scrolling through Instagram, pausing to like Jessica’s latest selfies. “She looks like a princess.”

“Coming from the future King’s husband himself?” Taeyeon replies wryly, grinning at Baekhyun’s yelp as she grinds her knuckles into his scalp.

“Hey! That’s decades from now. And anyways, we haven’t even done anything together yet. I always plan fun dates, but then even one paparazzo shows up and Junmyeon gets all angsty.” He rolls his eyes. “ _I can’t put you through this life_ , he says! _You’re going to get criticized by strangers on the internet all day!_ ”

“You’re terrible at impressions,” Taeyeon sighs.

“You’d get it if you heard him,” Baekhyun groans, flopping his entire upper body onto Taeyeon’s back. His voice quiets a little, fondly. “He’s such an idiot. As if anything could stop me from being with my soulmate.”

Taeyeon shoves him off, and he whines as he hits the ground. “Go do something productive,” she says. “Cut a carrot, or something.”

Baekhyun sticks his tongue out, but she’s already looking at another photo of Jessica surrounded by reams of fabric, the Parisian sun shining behind her.

She wonders if Jessica, too, feels like she’s a world away.

 

* * *

 

It’s a new year when Jessica finally comes home.

She pushes past the paparazzi and the fans, leaves her luggage to her manager and leaps into Taeyeon’s arms, sending them both tumbling to the ground.

She presses a kiss firmly onto Taeyeon’s lips, and there’s a smile there, brighter than any sun.

And she has her answer.

 

* * *

 

Later, Jessica sits in Taeyeon’s studio, arm held out. Her mark, the mirror image of Taeyeon’s, lays nestled in her inner elbow on the opposite arm to Taeyeon’s.

“Whatever you add to it, I want you to add to your own,” she says, head tilted to look at Taeyeon’s mark, surrounded in a circle of pale skin.

“It’ll sting,” Taeyeon says. “And people might ask questions.”

Jessica smiles, sits up. She curls her fingers around Taeyeon’s arm and lifts it to her face, pressing a kiss to her mark.

When she looks up at Taeyeon, she’s smiling too.

“I think flowers would be good.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Patrick Watson's song of the same name. I would like to write more in this series someday. Certainly a fic focusing primarily on Baekhyun + Taeyeon's relationship, and then maybe something where all four characters meet.
> 
> Next time, I promise I won't write about miserable lesbians.


End file.
